Well done, Jason. I'm sad now, since I was looking forward to this game. I was planning on loading 2000 MSP and picking up this and Fancy Pants Adventures soon, but it sounds like you saved me 1200 points.

I liked that you described the story as "remarkably uninteresting". Those are two words you usually don't see strung together like that because, as far as I know, they denote different things. But bearing in mind that this is a D&D game and they have tons of material at their disposal, yet the best Bedlam came up with is a basic dungeon crawl storyline with very few creatures. With such material to work with, it's remarkable that the story isn't interesting. Nice one.

My only confusion is why this received a 5. Not to resurrect old boring discussions about the "numbers" but I do think it sounds like a 3 or even a 2 is more appropriate for our system. A five lists a game as "Average:
As a whole, this game is quite average. You're unlikely to find much of anything remarkable about it at all. "

When in fact it sounds like the glitches are quite remarkable. I've never come across a lying autosave!

Note to gamers: when someone shoots you in the face, they aren't "gay." They are "psychopathic."

I feel my rating is fair to both consumers and to the game. It's rare indeed that a game with this many glitches doesn't find most of them fixed shortly after launch. In this day and age, it's safe to assume that the developers will fix most or all of them.

So why did I mention the glitches at all? Precisely because they hammered home the game's less fixable elements. Even when all of the patches are released and most or all of the glitches fixed, you'll be left playing a game that's very similar to what I experienced on a core level. Patches aren't likely to add in new enemies, better story elements and so forth. So I reviewed a game that was inefficiently put together and poorly executed, but a game that is still playable and one that can still provide moments of enjoyment for fans of the genre and this sort of experience. There were moments where I did have fun playing it and there are moments where it works well enough that a lower score wouldn't have been a proper reflection of my experience.

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy on reality

"What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things." - Shigeru Miyamoto on secret doors to another world